Minette Marrin: Last gasp of the seigneurs

Both Ken Clarke and Dominique Straus-Kahn owe their current predicaments largely to the same thing — an indifference to women’s feelings

At first blush there might seem to be little if any resemblance between
Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), the disgraced French politician, late of
Rikers Island jail, and Ken Clarke, Britain’s beleaguered justice minister.
Superficially at least, they are very different, and while both have risked
the annihilation of their political careers because of questions to do with
rape, only one is facing criminal charges of sexual assault.

It is quite impossible to imagine cuddly Ken Clarke in the dock for sex
crimes, while with the priapic DSK it was an accident waiting to happen,
according both to his enemies and to his friends.

But last week, as I wondered what could possibly explain the wildly irrational
fury here over Clarke’s remarks about rape, it struck me that there is
indeed a curious resemblance between the two men, and that this resemblance
might partly explain the violent uproar at what Clarke said.